Visitors of Nikon USA’s D800 product page will see the page title “Nikon D800 D-SLR Camera | High Dynamic Range Camera”. Apparently the high dynamic range is one of its highlighted features. How high is the dynamic range of the Nikon D800 and how does it compared with other cameras?

Nikon simply describes it as “incredible dynamic range”. Others have some actual measurements. DxOMark recently declared the Nikon D800 as the king of all cameras tested with overall score of 95. The dynamic range of Nikon D800, measured as Landscape score, is 14.4EV, the highest ever measured by DxOMark.

Another independent measurement was done by William Claff. The values cannot be directly compared with DxOMark results but the result is the same. Nikon D800 is the DSLR camera with the highest dynamic range at its base ISO of 100. You can find a chart comparing the so-called photographic dynamic range of Nikon D800, Nikon D4, and Canon EOS 5D Mark III here. The dynamic range of Nikon D800 is even higher than Nikon D4 at low ISO up to ISO 400. After that, it is just slightly lower than Nikon D4.